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Lore of Prophecies is good, you don´t expected Vizier Khilbron is the lich, Mursaat were ``goodies´´ after all, etc etc..

Factions....started good..an ancient evil force awake, Shiro is walking, he creates Afflicted..you have flashbacks about Shiro´s past..and then it turns dumb when you go to Sunjian. You use the Spear and the Ashes, which you gained beating boring missions..and then, ``oh, noes, the artifacts were destroyed, now we must get help form Luxon and Kurzic´´. After getting aided by the factions `` now we must kill Kuunavang, the source of Shiro´s powah´´ ( WTF WHY WE DIDNT KILLED HER BEFORE). After defeating Kunny, `` oh noes, Shiro became mortal, now we can kill him´´ ( WTF AGAIN WHY WE DIDN´T WAIT UNTIL HE BECAME MORTAL AND THEN SLAYED HIM). You know the rest of the story..

Nightfall...is fine until you finish Gate of Madness..you go to the Gate seeking aid from the Gods and..humm...

``Gods, help us´´
``We cannot´´
``WTF WHY WE WENT HERE THEN???11ONEONEONE
``Don´t worry. You can beat Abbadon after all´´
``How?´´
``Use your courage, use the strenght of your heart, use thep ower of the friendship and hopeness and all those pink sensations¡´´
``You have reason. BY THE POWER OF THE FIVE GODS. I AM <insert character´s name here>.

Then your armor becomes pink, and the screen becomes pink too. Your character gets a pink staff with a pink heart, and with the power of the love and frienship, you beat the evil, evil, evil Abbadon.

If we get to side with Palawa Joko when we reach Elona in GW2, I will certainly forgive ArenaNet all their GW1 failings. Story choice = win, especially when story choice lets us side with a pretty awesome guy (Palawa).

Going on that theme, I also hope that can we help the Kurzicks and Luxons, who by now probably hate Cantha more than they hate each other, unify and drive the Canthan Empire into the dirt with a massive army of Juggernauts and Siege Turtles.

My advise, stick to your PvP and leave the PvE to those who acctual know what happend. If you did not like it, suffer in silence or get it all right.

And as a side note, Mrmango, this is lore related, so please shut up.

Gotta agree with this statement completely.

Quote:

Originally Posted by isamu kurosawa

What you have a problem with is the story of the game not the game lore.
The lore of the game is all the back storey, the history of the world etc which gw goes into quite alot of detail ablout compared to most games.

The story gives emphasis on the lore by showing you there isn't one,shallow problem in the world but infact many. Every region has its own problems to deal with the culmination of which prevents them from tackling any other threat that turns up (i.e. the titans).

The role of the hero in the prophecies story is to ultimatlry defeat the lich, everything else you encounter are merely other problems you get dragged into while helping your people escape to safety before you discover your true purpose.

The core storyline and especially the lore in guild wars happens to be very strong, its just not very well presented in the mission by mission format. EotN's format was more fluid but unfortunatly was rushed.

Keep in mind most of the game lore is actually presented in the form of quests rather than missions, Quests that very few people bother to complete.

Gotta agree with this as well.

Also, shoog!, it seems to me you just went in and out of the actual story, missing everything that connects all four games together. If you want to understand the REAL lore, you need to do quests, read their dialogue, and pay attention dueing cinimatics. Only paying attention to the mission objectives won't get you to know anything, I know you said you won't pay attention to what I said, but trust me, it is how you learn the lore other then going to wiki, that simple.

As for my opinion of gw lore, I like prophecies and factions, despite what people say about factions, I think it makes sense. Nightfall was the worst of the three, but not bad, really did tie up the loose ends. As for Eye of the North, in terms of actual lore, it wasn't bad at all, but in terms of main enemy, that was bound to fail with killing a god, even though the god was chained and basically powerless *thanks to balthazar, turns out the gods really DID help with abaddon's defeat by us*.

Prophecies
ANet was very good at plot twists, etctera. I loved the whole tie-in with the Titans in the Flameseeker Prophecies, and the fact we were the "bad guys". No complaints.

Factions
Rant at this game as much as you want, it is a massive failure. Sad too as it led to several new gameplay concepts in GW - challenge missions, certificates (monastery credits, etc) for quest completion, and so on. I liked the environments, too. The story is just horrible. I can rant on about it endlessly.

The story in a nutshell (don't read if you haven't completed Factions):
1) Lolz plague something bad is happening lets go investigate.
2) Oh noes big bad guy!
3) Let's waste 2 quests and one mission to visit some spirit lady.
4) Spirit lady told us we need artifacts.
5) We r get artifacts lololol.
6) Oh noes Shiro still alive and he blow up artifact. THIS MAKES STEPS 3 TO 5 A TOTAL WASTE OF TIME!
7) GGGRRRIIIIINNNDDDDD so other peoples r help us kill bad guy.
8) K we helped joo reach teh Kuunavang now we r stop helping you for no reason.
9) ZOMG EMPEROR IN DANGER GO SAVE!
10) "Muahahahaha I just killed Master Togo so I can be mortal and killable! Behold my stupidity!"
11) "Oh noes I r dead. JADE WIND HYAAAAAAAAAH!"
12) *Random Suun adepts come out of NOWHERE and make Shiro jade-wind himself. Who knew?*

You see how horrible it is?

Nightfall
I like the story. It's complex, the voicework is very nice, they add more dimension to characters as well as varying story arcs for replayability and a general sense that more is going on in the world than what you are currently doing. Only problem is that killing an evil God is incredibly dramatic and there's no real way to top that (TWO evil Gods maybe? :P ).

Eye of the North
It was an expansion so lore wasn't that strong, but it still answered some questions on how Tyria has fared. It served its purpose as a bridge, though the "Great" Destroyer was a bit of a ripoff, as was the epilogue. The fate of the Dwarves is pretty sad - no MMORPG is perfect without Dwarves!

In the long run, your rant is overhyped, you paid no attention to quest lore, I take it you used your Prophecies manual which had a LOT of useful backstory - and used it instead to fuel your fireplace. For shame. Don't rant unless you have enough support as to why.

Nightfall...is fine until you finish Gate of Madness..you go to the Gate seeking aid from the Gods and..humm...

``Gods, help us´´
``We cannot´´
``WTF WHY WE WENT HERE THEN???11ONEONEONE
``Don´t worry. You can beat Abbadon after all´´
``How?´´
``Use your courage, use the strenght of your heart, use thep ower of the friendship and hopeness and all those pink sensations¡´´
``You have reason. BY THE POWER OF THE FIVE GODS. I AM <insert character´s name here>.

Then your armor becomes pink, and the screen becomes pink too. Your character gets a pink staff with a pink heart, and with the power of the love and frienship, you beat the evil, evil, evil Abbadon.

That´s my opinion about GW lore.

PD: I didn´t beat GWEN.

lol, to be fair i was never fond of the whole Us Vs a god who wants to destroy the other gods (and any creature that follows them) who themselves refuse to do anything.

Ill also agree that the additional lore of eotn was somewhat lacking compared to the other campaigns lores especially when it came to the main villains the destoryers (other than the one mention of the great destroyed in the SF quest)

Now ignoring those points i think Gw lore is very good, sure it has links to more traditional lore ie. Dwarves (then again its near to impossible to come up with anything truely original in this day and age) but Gw likes to put its own twist on things as seen at the end of Eotn. But in general its a break from most other lore. If your willing to explore and read the numerious dialogs from missions/quests etc. you can see that there is a large amount of lore in this relatively new world (when to compared to games with already established backgrounds like Warcraft or Warhammer.) Exploring around you can see various other things that arnt explained (atleast not directly) but they clearly have some kind of story to them this leaves gaps, and something some fans love to more than anything is to fill in the blanks and develop there own theories, eg. working out weither the mursaat truly were Good/Evil/Other.

I've been thinking about this for a while. Even though I am much more interested in PvP than in PvE, I'm still amazed by how dumb and stupid a game lore can be.

Prophecies

The only thing I liked about GW:P's lore is the beginning. Those Charrs are pretty cool bad guys, and aren't an irritating cliche. I also was pleased that for once we won't get flooded by that fantasy books dwarves/elves/dragons/etc theme, which really started to get boring. The fact that Ascalon was also losing the war added interest.

Just a question: How are the Charr interesting and the Mursatt not?

I agree the Dwarves were a horrible idea, and I too am sick of the Evil Undead (looks like they'll feature prominently in GW2 as well...)

But the Mursatt, and the whole White Mantle vs Shining Blade is one of my favorite parts of the original storylines...

Lore of Prophecies is good, you don´t expected Vizier Khilbron is the lich,

I did. Powerful magic user from a destroyed civilisation from which everyone else is undead, and was in fact the cause of the disaster that destroyed that civilisation (and thus, presumably, at ground zero) just happens to want the same magical artifact that a powerful undead magic user wants? I wonder.

To the OP: I find it interesting that you cite SC and WC3 as good stories, especially given your apparent dislike of cliches, since WC3 is basically a rehash of SC's plot:

Campaign 1: One human gets corrupted to become the Little Bad. Another human departs human civilisation for parts unknown. They'll be back later.

Campaign 2: Bad guys rampage for a while, culminating in the summon of the Big Bad.

Final Campaign: Elder race fights defensive battle against Big Bad while gathering leet elder race powers to destroy Big Bad... with a little help from the human from earlier. Told ya they'll be back.

XP Campaign 2: New faction appears and ends up joining with the Little Bad's main competition for Big Bad status.

XP Campaign 3: The Little Bad defeats the new faction featured in the previous campaign as well as anyone else who sticks their noses in to become the new Big Bad... who sits around doing not much (overtly, anyway) for several years until the timeline for the next game starts.

The details are different, but apart from the Orcs in WC3 (which basically could have been left out entirely without significantly affecting the other campaigns, and pretty much were in the expansion. Ironically, Orc campaign was probably my favorite in WC3), they both follow the same basic formula.

The Guild Wars' storylines suffer most in that there's no human connection. Good stories are usually all about the details, and the human element. GW stories are generally just attempts at "cool factor" scenes that link together excuses to move to new map designs.

You can tell that the writers legitimately tried to have some empathy in the story. Shiro was almost depicted as an unfortunate villain, but he immediately turned into a mustache-twirler. His reasons for believing the fortune teller were pretty lame, if existent at all. The whole Koss and Melonni side story I could have done without. Really, they just need better writers, and people who are better at executing the story in cutscenes. It really ruins the atmosphere when Shiro does the /moan emote as he literally slides up a winding set of stairs.

Could be worse, it could be like many Japanese RPGs, that force you to watch every cut scene without skipping as it took them 3 years to make, rendering every single strand of nostril hair. With 3 weeks left, they programmed the game bits.

Theory: Each of the gods can, in fact, only contain a limited amount of power inside themselves. Maybe it's that holding down conflicting portfolios will cause problems for the deity, or maybe it's just because there's a limit in how much power any one entity can actually hold... but whatever the reason, when Abaddon was defeated the first time around, while the gods had the power to destroy him, they couldn't absorb all his power. They took what they could - Grenth absorbing Abaddon's power of water under the guise of taking power over cold - but they couldn't take the portfolio of knowledge from him.

What they needed, like with Grenth and Dhuum, was a mortal to assume the power. However, it needed to be the right one, and there were none suitable at the time Abaddon was cast down. So they chained him instead.

Fast forward to the last decade or so. Finally, the gods look down and see Kormir, deciding that she has the potential to take the position. Maybe she's the first, or maybe there have been others that have been tested and failed and have been lost to history. Or perhaps not... perhaps Shiro was the last to be tested, and Envoyhood is the fate of those that failed. Or maybe they simply grew impatient, knowing that worse disasters would ensue if they did not hurry.

Nevertheless, deciding that she has the potential, they begin the test - starting by exposing her to a fragment of Abaddon's power, and allowing some of that power back into the world in the process. Finally, after many tests, the gods set up her final test: To see whether Kormir can gather champions worthy of a god. This is where we come in - while the other Gods still retained the ability to destroy him any time they chose (at the risk of his power going uncontained) they wished to make sure Kormir's followers could indeed pass the test.

So they made Abaddon the test... letting him have exactly as much power in the process as they thought necassary to set the test to the difficulty they wanted.

The Nightfall manual reveals Kormir's past, that she was a very good leader and well respected Sunspear.

Of course, I think her acts in Nightfall pretty much cancel all that out.

Other than that, drax, that sounds quite probable. I think the Gods wouldn't be foolhardy enough just to leave Abaddon there, they must have planned it ahead of time.

Also, consider maybe most of the power the Gods have is ethereal or intangible? They have the ability to create, open rifts, and much more. Abaddon lost much of this power, and mainly can only do the things a giant head and hands can do. I'm sure he could be more powerful if he still had access to all of his former power, but he doesn't.